The race was open to all General Mills employees and their friends/family. I was running it with my dad (who works for General Mills) and my little brother Joe. Joe very recently took up running and did a fantastic job at it. The race was at the General Mills corporate campus and was very well organized. They had lots of yogurt, bread, oatmeal bars, etc. before the race even started. They also had a huge inflatable jumping thing (what do you call those?!) for little kids to play in.
Anyways, Joe, Dad, and I lined up at the start line and took off when it was time. Joe, sped ahead of all of us. I thought for sure he was going to tucker himself out early. I quickly left Dad behind as well so none of us really ran together. The course was a little bit hilly mixed with a few narrow trails. I went out kind of fast because we had started near the front half of the pack. I was trying to keep up with the fastest of the bunch and it wasn't happening. I got side stitches pretty quick from going out so fast. I started to slow down before we even hit the first mile. I hit the first mile in 9 minutes. This was slower than my first 5k, but at this point I really didn't care. I was having a hard time with the fact that I wasn't actually passing anyone and I was being passed instead. I thought that we had clearly started way too far up in the pack.
Anyways, somewhere around midpoint, the side stitches started to go away and I started to actually enjoy the run a little more. We ended up on a small trail that was nice for scenery but kind of bad for running. The people behind me were still passing me, and I kept trying to get over as far as I could to the right but some people still didn't get it. One girl was right behind my left shoulder breathing super loud. I've never heard someone breath so loud while running. But she just kept breathing on my shoulder and would not pass me. I was starting to get a little bothered and kept moving further over to the right to the point to where I was literally running almost off the trail. She still wouldn't pass me. Finally after a good 5 minutes of listening to her heavy breathing, she finally passed me. I ended up passing her again later because she ended up walking. I hoped she wouldn't start running again--luckily she didn't get close to me if she did.
Anyways, I finished the race in 29:09. I finished 250 out of nearly 500 runners. My little brother Joe finished in 26 minutes!! Dad came in somewhere around 35 minutes. I definetly didn't PR on this course, but it was a fun race to start the season with. I even got to see the Trix bunny and Cuckoo from Cocoa Puffs.
We got a really nice Tech shirt from this run...which I am going to love training in this season. I will have more pics of the race up soon as soon as my brother sends them to me.
Oh!! And you have to take a look at the saftey pins they gave us!! I ended up poking 3 giant holes in the pink shirt I ran because of these dudes. They were HUGE!!
4 comments:
Great job, Rachel. It sounds like you have a good baseline to start your racing season.
LOL on the safety pins. I did a local race like that once. GIANT safety pins..wtf?
A tech shirt from a 5K, nice!
Good work, even if you did have to use the biggest safety pins in race history! Sometimes I wonder if the organizers have run a race when you see things like that.
LOL, those are some SERIOUSLY huge safety pins! Great job with the race--sounds like a great way to start out the season! And it's so great that you got to do it with your dad and brother!
Those ARE enormous safety pins. What's up with that?!
I love the story about the girl breathing really loudly, that's totally the sort of thing that would bother me, too!
Congrats on the race :)
Post a Comment